IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/ifauwp/2007_022.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic competition in Swedish local spending on childcare, schooling and care for the elderly

Author

Listed:
  • Edmark, Karin

    (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation)

Abstract

This study tests for strategic competition in public spending on childcare and primary education, and care for the elderly, using panel data on Swedish municipalities over 1996-2005. The high degree of decentralization in the organization of the public sector implies that Swedish data is highly suitable for this type of study. The study is not limited to interactions in the same type of expenditure, but also allows for effects across expenditures. The results give no robust support for the hypothesis that municipalities react on the spending policy of neighbouring municipalities in the decision on own spending on care of the elderly, childcare and education.

Suggested Citation

  • Edmark, Karin, 2007. "Strategic competition in Swedish local spending on childcare, schooling and care for the elderly," Working Paper Series 2007:22, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2007_022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2007/wp07-22.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kelejian, Harry H & Prucha, Ingmar R, 1999. "A Generalized Moments Estimator for the Autoregressive Parameter in a Spatial Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(2), pages 509-533, May.
    2. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2003. "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, March.
    3. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    4. Dahlberg, M. & Fredriksson, P., 2001. "Migration and Local Public Services," Papers 2001-12, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    5. Johan Lundberg, 2006. "Spatial interaction model of spillovers from locally provided public services," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(6), pages 631-644.
    6. Sole Olle, Albert, 2003. "Electoral accountability and tax mimicking: the effects of electoral margins, coalition government, and ideology," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 685-713, November.
    7. Kelejian, Harry H & Prucha, Ingmar R, 1998. "A Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares Procedure for Estimating a Spatial Autoregressive Model with Autoregressive Disturbances," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 99-121, July.
    8. Redoano, Michela, 2003. "Fiscal Interactions Among European Countries," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 680, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    9. John Douglas Wilson & Roger H. Gordon, 2003. "Expenditure Competition," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 399-417, April.
    10. Christoph A. Schaltegger & Simon Zemp, 2003. "Spatial Spillovers in Metropolitan Areas: Evidence from Swiss Communes," CREMA Working Paper Series 2003-06, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    11. Maarten Allers & J. Elhorst, 2005. "Tax Mimicking and Yardstick Competition Among Local Governments in the Netherlands," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 493-513, August.
    12. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Millimet, Daniel L. & Rangaprasad, Vasudha, 2007. "Strategic competition amongst public schools," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 199-219, March.
    14. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 269-304, June.
    15. Frederico Revelli, 2006. "Spatial Interactions Among Governments," Chapters, in: Ehtisham Ahmad & Giorgio Brosio (ed.), Handbook of Fiscal Federalism, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Sole-Olle, Albert, 2006. "Expenditure spillovers and fiscal interactions: Empirical evidence from local governments in Spain," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 32-53, January.
    17. Baicker, Katherine, 2005. "The spillover effects of state spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 529-544, February.
    18. Fredriksson, Per G. & List, John A. & Millimet, Daniel L., 2004. "Chasing the smokestack: strategic policymaking with multiple instruments," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 387-410, July.
    19. Aronsson, Thomas & Lundberg, Johan & Wikstrom, Magnus, 2000. "The impact of regional public expenditures on the local decision to spend," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 185-202, March.
    20. Matz Dahlberg & Eva Johansson, 2000. "An examination of the dynamic behaviour of local governments using GMM bootstrapping methods," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(4), pages 401-416.
    21. Edmark, Karin & Ågren, Hanna, 2008. "Identifying strategic interactions in Swedish local income tax policies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 849-857, May.
    22. Niklas Hanes, 2002. "Spatial Spillover Effects in the Swedish Local Rescue Services," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(5), pages 531-539.
    23. Dahlberg, Matz & Edmark, Karin, 2008. "Is there a "race-to-the-bottom" in the setting of welfare benefit levels? Evidence from a policy intervention," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1193-1209, June.
    24. Bordignon, Massimo & Cerniglia, Floriana & Revelli, Federico, 2003. "In search of yardstick competition: a spatial analysis of Italian municipality property tax setting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 199-217, September.
    25. John Shea, 1997. "Instrument Relevance in Multivariate Linear Models: A Simple Measure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 348-352, May.
    26. Figlio, David N. & Kolpin, Van W. & Reid, William E., 1999. "Do States Play Welfare Games?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 437-454, November.
    27. Case, Anne C. & Rosen, Harvey S. & Hines, James Jr., 1993. "Budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence : Evidence from the states," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 285-307, October.
    28. Jan K. Brueckner, 2000. "Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom: Theory and Evidence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 66(3), pages 505-525, January.
    29. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 2), pages 269-304, June.
    30. Jan K. Brueckner, 1999. "Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom: Theory and Evidence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 66(2), pages 505-525, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joan Costa-i-Font & Filipe De-Albuquerque & Hristos Doucouliagos, 2011. "How Significant are Fiscal Interactions in Federations? A Meta-Regression Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 3517, CESifo.
    2. Joan Costa-Font & Filipe De-Albuquerque & Hristos Doucouliagos, 2014. "Do jurisdictions compete on taxes? A meta-regression analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 451-470, December.
    3. Costa-i-Font, Joan & De-Albuquerque, Filipe & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2015. "When does inter-jurisdictional competition engender a "race to the bottom"?: a meta-regression analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60948, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Ohlsson, Henry, 2007. "The legacy of the Swedish gift and inheritance tax, 1884–2004," Working Paper Series 2007:23, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    5. Costa-i-Font, Joan & De-Albuquerque, Filipe & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2011. "How significant are fiscal interactions in designing federations?: a meta-regression analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37535, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Yanqing Jiang, 2014. "Spatial Strategic Interaction In Environmental Protection: An Empirical Study Of The Chinese Provinces," Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 203-216, November.
    7. Yanqing Jiang, 2015. "Education expenditure in China: potential strategic behavior among regional governments," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 233-246, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Federico Revelli, 2005. "On Spatial Public Finance Empirics," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 475-492, August.
    2. Edmark, Karin & Ågren, Hanna, 2008. "Identifying strategic interactions in Swedish local income tax policies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 849-857, May.
    3. Barbara ERMINI & Raffaella SANTOLINI, 2007. "Horizontal Interaction on Local Councils' Expenditures. Evidence from Italy," Working Papers 278, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    4. Costa-i-Font, Joan & De-Albuquerque, Filipe & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2011. "How significant are fiscal interactions in federations?: a meta-regression analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37536, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Francisco J. Delgado & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Matías Mayor, 2015. "On The Determinants Of Local Tax Rates: New Evidence From Spain," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(2), pages 351-368, April.
    6. Geys, Benny, 2006. "Looking across borders: A test of spatial policy interdependence using local government efficiency ratings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 443-462, November.
    7. Sebastian Langer, 2019. "Expenditure interactions between municipalities and the role of agglomeration forces: a spatial analysis for North Rhine-Westphalia," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 62(3), pages 497-527, June.
    8. Kristien Werck & Bruno Heyndels & Benny Geys, 2008. "The impact of ‘central places’ on spatial spending patterns: evidence from Flemish local government cultural expenditures," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(1), pages 35-58, March.
    9. Costa-i-Font, Joan & De-Albuquerque, Filipe & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2011. "How significant are fiscal interactions in designing federations?: a meta-regression analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37535, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Raffaella Santolini, 2008. "A spatial cross‐sectional analysis of political trends in Italian municipalities," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(3), pages 431-451, August.
    11. Cassette, Aurélie & Di Porto, Edoardo & Foremny, Dirk, 2012. "Strategic fiscal interaction across borders: Evidence from French and German local governments along the Rhine Valley," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 17-30.
    12. Lenka Šťastná, 2009. "Spatial Interdependence of Local Public Expenditures: Selected Evidence from the Czech Republic," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 3(1), pages 007-025, March.
    13. Matthieu Leprince & Sonia Paty & Emmanuelle Reulier, 2005. "Choix d'imposition et interactions spatiales entre collectivités locales. Un test sur les départements français," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 71(1), pages 67-93.
    14. Luis Ayala & Ana Herrero & Jorge Martinez‐Vazquez, 2021. "Welfare benefits in highly decentralized fiscal systems: Evidence on interregional mimicking," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(5), pages 1178-1208, October.
    15. Revelli, Federico, 2006. "Performance rating and yardstick competition in social service provision," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(3), pages 459-475, February.
    16. Hammadou, Hakim & Paty, Sonia & Savona, Maria, 2014. "Strategic interactions in public R&D across European countries: A spatial econometric analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1217-1226.
    17. Yu, Jihai & Zhou, Li-An & Zhu, Guozhong, 2016. "Strategic interaction in political competition: Evidence from spatial effects across Chinese cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 23-37.
    18. Gebremeskel Gebremariam & Tesfa Gebremedhin & Peter Schaeffer, 2012. "County-level determinants of local public services in Appalachia: a multivariate spatial autoregressive model approach," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 49(1), pages 175-190, August.
    19. Feld Lars P. & Reulier Emmanuelle, 2009. "Strategic Tax Competition in Switzerland: Evidence from a Panel of the Swiss Cantons," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 91-114, February.
    20. Agostini, Claudio A. & Brown, Philip H. & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2010. "Neighbor effects in the provision of public goods in a young democracy: Evidence from China," IFPRI discussion papers 1027, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Strategic interactions; spatial econometrics; decentralization; local public spending;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2007_022. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ali Ghooloo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifagvse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.